Posts from September 2008

September 23, 2008

I
am HENRI PAULSON, the Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of
America, and the personal financial adviser to GEORGE W. BUSH (the
eldest son of the former dictator of America, GENERAL GEORGE HUSSEIN
WALKER BUSH).

This letter will definitely come to you as a
huge surprise, but I implore you to take the time to go through it
carefully as the decision you make will go off a long way to determine
the future and continued existence of the entire members of my country.

It
is with deep sense of purpose and utmost sincerity that I have the
privilege to write you this letter knowing full well how you will feel
as regards to receiving a mail from somebody you have not met or seen
before. There is no need to fear, I got your address from a Wall Street
business directory which lends credence to my humble belief. I also
assure you of my honesty and trustworthiness. I need to ask you to
support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds
of great magnitude.

During the last Military Regime here in
America, the Government officials set up companies and awarded
themselves contracts which were grossly over-invoiced in various
ministries. My country has had great crisis that has caused the need
for large transfer of funds of US$800,000,000,000.00 (eight hundred
billion US dollars) in cash for safe-keeping. If you would assist me in
this transfer, it would be of most profitable for you.

I am
working with the honourable MR. PHIL GRAMM, lobbyist for UBS, who will
be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As Senator,
you may know him as leader of the American banking deregulation
movement in the 1990s.

This is a matter of great urgence. We
need a immediate blank cheque. We need the funds as quickly as
possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our
close friends because as civil servants we are constantly under
surveillance by Democratic members of Congress, the media, and the
American public. My family lawyer, MR. RICK DAVIS, advised me that I
should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a
next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please note that
this transaction is 100% safe and we hope to commence the transfer
latest seven (7) banking days from the date of the receipt of the
following information: all of your bank account, IRA and college fund
account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to
wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission
for this transaction. This way we will use your country's name to apply
for payment in your name. After I receive that information, I will
respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to
protect the funds. That's all. Let me know what you think about this.

We are looking forward to doing this business with you and solicit your confidentiality in this transaction.

May Allah show you mercy as you do so?

Your faithfully,

Dr. Minister of Treasury Paulson

{Note: originally from Americablog; this is something that is floating around the webb, here considerably "spiced-up" by John Aravosis.}

September 22, 2008

Surprisingly little separates what's happening to the financial
market and what happened during the run-up to the Iraq War, many years
ago. Both are cases of folly followed by bailout. Both involve the
White House asking for broad powers, to be accorded by a docile
Congress as quickly as possible without bothering to subject the
proposal to any scrutiny. In both cases, bystanders get ground up in
the gears of history whilst the people who got it wrong, time and
again, are not forced into any sort of reckoning. And there is no end
in sight.

It makes sense that someone would find a way to express this connection artistically. And so we have this image,
from Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok, which blends the satellite
images of Colin Powell's famous presentation to the United Nations with
the news of our current economic meltdown.

Naturally, one imagines that if Colin Powell were to walk onto the
floor of the New York Stock Exchange with a vial of anthrax, he'd
likely find a number of people yearning for the sweet release of death.